She squinted, then laughed.

He smiled a little, yet said, “You shouldn’t laugh.”

She laughed harder.

“Actually, I sew quite well.”

“Perhaps. But you don’t exactly seem like the god of sewing’s chosen one. The baby’s mother knew what she asked for.”

The wind stirred the tree. Shadows moved in patterns around them.

Kestrel’s heart was in her throat even before she knew what she’d say. “Would you do what your mother did? Would you delay the naming of your child for the favor of one god or another?”

There was a startled silence. “My child.” Arin tried the words, exploring them. She heard in his voice what she’d seen on his face in the village as he’d held the baby.

She looked at the tree. It was a tree. A leaf, a leaf. Some things just are. They don’t signal other meanings. They aren’t like a god, casting its meaning over an entire year, or like a conversation, which is itself and also all the things that aren’t said.

Her swift heart scurried along.

“It wouldn’t be up to me,” he said finally. “It would be my wife’s choice.”

She met his eyes. He touched her hot cheek.

A tree was not a tree. A leaf, not a leaf. She understood what he didn’t say.

She stood. “Come, the stream is amazing. Aren’t you thirsty? Your horse has better sense than you.” A smile. Teasing . . . a little shy, too, yet discovering a newfound safety in showing shyness. She held out her hand.

He took it.

The army camped in the forest on the height of the hills outside Errilith’s manor. Another stream coursed through the trees, wide and rough. It fed over rocks and went down deep. Kestrel went with the women soldiers to bathe. She thought about Sarsine, wishing she had the woman’s steady, clear way of seeing things. With a twinge of guilt, Kestrel realized that Sarsine had no way of knowing how or why Kestrel had disappeared from Arin’s house. Kestrel had been incapable of leaving any word behind and now it was too late. A message, no matter how obliquely worded, could be intercepted and understood. She imagined her father discovering exactly where she was. Her stomach shrank.

So instead she thought about what she’d say to Sarsine when she returned to the city. I missed you, she’d say. I never thanked you for what you did for me.

She shucked her clothes onto the grass. She needed to feel the water on her skin.

It was freezing. She ducked under, opened her eyes, and looked up through the wavering water at the blue and yellow sky. The cold made her remember that her father must have held her once the way Arin had held the baby. She held her breath and treaded hard to keep her weight below the surface.

It was cold, but the light was beautiful: broken and blurred by the water’s rippled silk, as if the sky wasn’t simply the sky but a whole other world. Magic, possible. Just within reach.

She washed her clothes and didn’t wait for them to dry fully before putting them back on. She wrung out her hair and braided it.

Wending between the trees, she stepped noiselessly, finding moss or dirt or stone for her feet, never leaves or twigs.

You walk well, her father had said once.

Being quiet is hardly a requisite skill for battle, Father.

You could be a Ranger, he’d insisted, but this was after a spectacularly bad training session he’d watched. Her with a sword. The captain of her father’s personal guard screaming at her. She knew her father didn’t believe his own hope.

His voice echoed in her head, and her heart cramped. It felt as if she were underwater again, with someone holding her below the surface.

She shoved the memory away. There was only so much she could bear to remember.

A game. Make a game of it. How silently can you walk? Let’s see.

Toe, not heel. Tree root. This patch of earth, darker and therefore soft. Spears of sun pierced through the trees. Her damp braid bounced between her shoulder blades.

But there was no one to witness her silence. No one to say You walk well. Although Kestrel understood the plea sure of doing something for herself alone, had played the piano for hours for her own ears and to feel the stretch and jump of her fingers, the reach of her long arms, she also knew what it was like to play for someone. It makes a difference. It’s hard not to want to be heard, seen. To share.

A twig lay in her path. She paused, then deliberately stomped it. Crack.

“Pity.” The voice echoed in the quiet clearing. “You were doing so nicely.”

Roshar. Her eyes found him several paces away, leaning against a tree, watching her. She approached. There was blood on him.